Monday, 17 November 2014

Shinro Ohtake takes the process of layering pieces of paper
to an obsession. As he randomly gathers magazine clippings, old photographs, bits
of scrap, tape, paper and card, he hangs them together with string and wire or encrusts
them onto supporting surfaces. The most significant piece in the show is a structure
resembling a cabinet called ‘Retina’ from 1993 which floods the eye with obscure
details, sifted, chosen and applied until the underlying object develops a skin
of many images. Each slip of glued paper accumulates without any prevailing
hierarchy of value. This profusion of cut and glued images initially suggests
Cubist collage but it’s actually quite different. These tiny images are so decontextualized
that they are reduced to the point of evaporation. Any narrative progression is
negated through an endless series of cancellations.

Ohtake describes this process as ‘pasting’, a deliberate
overlaying of material until it becomes an almost geological record of time and
labour. Claiming a Japanese attachment to the accretion of material, this becomes
problematic in a London exhibition space. In ‘Layers of Time Memory 2’ he takes
a deep box resembling the reverse of a stretched canvas and fills the hollow
space with strips of paper such that it becomes a web of accumulated lines that
obscure the space and its depth. ‘Time Memory 28’ from 2014 flattens the relief
effects of pasted paper so that he creates contrast between cut horizontal
strips and torn, bright red blobs of painted paper that fall and scatter across
the picture. From a distance the image resembles a Modernist grid and even
echoes the restrained colours of geometric Nicholson or Mondrian paintings. Up
close, you can see him filling space and making form akin to weaving or
embroidery. The expression of the material determines its patterns.

‘Scrapbook #66’ uses the thickly, pasted pages of a book as structural
strength so that it stands upright. We can see that the pages carry content but
they are so close together that it’s impossible to observe them individually. Ohtake
adds a leathery tail on the spine suggesting a reptilian mischief. This
scrapbook illustrates how his art has an introverted quality that teasingly
withholds significance. However, all of his work asks for an engagement.
Ohtake’s art is less Conceptual and better understood as a rich interdependence
of material, craftsmanship and process. They invite optical appreciation but threaten
to overwhelm the viewer with a vast and almost infinite cosmos of stuff,
floating free from any point of origin.

Monday, 3 November 2014

Yoshitomo Nara is an artist whose work blends the naivety and mischief of children. At the Dairy in Bloomsbury, he's showing his distinctive paintings along with drawings and new sculptures inspired by the recent nuclear accident in Japan. His style and subject borrows largely from cartoons, particularly the winsome nature of Japanese ‘Animé’. Children
stare directly back at the viewer with exaggerated features, particularly
glossy, sparkling eyes in mismatching colours that sometimes incorporate symbols
such as the nuclear disarmament sign in ‘Wish World Peace’. Mouths are tautly
drawn in a horizontal slash and the nose is plainly described with two nostril
dots. These children project the confidence of adults, but maintain infantile features.
It is a disarming contradiction that Nara exhaustively repeats, setting up a
tension without resolution throughout his work.

This innocence is overlaid with an ironic maturity. Defiance characterises these intense figures, which fill the paintings with brooding
petulance. For all of their inherent charm, these characters
project a disobedient fury. Sometimes Nara will overlay the works with text
such as ‘Fuckin’ Politics! and ‘Rock’n Roll The Roll’ which suggest an anarchic
negation rather than a programme for revolt. Music’s role as a means of self-expression
and liberation is a recurring theme.

One room is devoted to Nara’s drawings over three decades,
which upstage both the paintings and sculptures with a direct simplicity. They
operate as an autobiographical record of work, travel and feeling. Any
calculated charm in Nara’s more commercial work appears ineffectual and
repetitive in comparison with these authentic and lively sketches that come to
life as part of a larger exhibition installation.

A fountain of stacked plastic babies crying a cascade of real
tears illustrates Nara’s propensity for theatricality. While some of life’s
grittier challenges are alluded to in the exhibition, Nara’s art veers dangerously
close to whimsy with an almost Victorian reverence for childhood
as a place of emotional sanctuary and nostalgic retreat for adults.

About Me

I am a London-based lecturer and writer specialising in Modern and Contemporary art. I teach at Christie's Education, Sotheby's Institute and work freelance at the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery. I am also a reviewer for Flash Art magazine.This blog is a place to comment on art and visual culture in London and abroad. I Tweet @Joshuaswhite and Five Senses can be found at http://joshuasimonwhite.blogspot.co.uk

For any publishing projects or media appearances, I can be reached at joshua@joshuaswhite.com. Formerly, I was a founding editor of Metrobeat (now Citysearch), New York, the first listings guide to the city and subsequently the launch producer of the BBC Online homepage.